In Russia, the initial euphoria of the Bolshevik leaders for a new socialist society ... combined with a commitment to a truly universal health care system, gave a huge boost to the emergence of both the eugenic and medical aspects of human genetics. The obstacles that proved so formidable to the successful launch of the field in the Westthe lack of available data on the genealogy of diseases in families, the difficulty in getting a statistically significant number of identical twins to study, and the skepticism of the medical establishmentwere all swept aside in the Soviet Union. In the 1920s ... the groundwork was laid for a uniquely Russian approach to medical genetics and (the foundation of) the worlds leading center for the study of the genetic basis of many diseases and human genetics in general. The immense success of the movement, which is little known even to Russians, is brought to life in V.V. Babkovs The Dawn of Human Genetics, as is its dramatic and violent end, which resulted in the liquidation of many of the countrys finest biologists, as well as a major setback to the development of world science. Like many other promising ideas and projects that were born in the Soviet Union, this one was abruptly truncated and then virtually eradicated.

Reading the past reminds us that each generation believes it knows more than it really knows. Babkovs book will illuminate our understanding of the history of science because the voices of the past come alive, no longer filtered through the historians mind, and they overwhelm us by their hopes, their despair, and their secular faith that what they propose will be realized through the support of the state.
The Quarterly Review of Biology